About Kristen Joy Emack

Self trained, Guggenheim awarded artist contribute to an essential theme in the history of photography, documenting children grow up. Through intimate portrayals of familial bonds, Emack crafts narratives that resist stereotypes and racialized expectations. Embracing affinity, beauty and resilience, their photographs are vessels of love and agency—depicting what it means to be seen, and what it means to belong.

In Cousins, Emack offers a sacred, sustained meditation on girlhood and kinship. She photographed her daughter and nieces for over a decade. She follows daily trials and adventures of girls whose bonds radiate with innocence, confidence and spiritual knowing. Her images are full of magic and wonder. Spontaneous and playful, there is no performance—only observant communion, shared growth, and embodied presence.

Emack’s practice shares lineage with such image-makers as Gordon Parks, Sally Mann, Ruby Latoya Frazier and Melissa Shook.

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I hope they see themselves as works of art. Beautiful, dynamic, elegant, interesting, and worthy. . . I hope my work challenges stereotypes and viewers find themselves wiser, more connected, and also, reflected with love.

• Interview in CooterMag, Europe